MARINES SEE CALM IN ONCE-VIOLENT AFGHAN AREA

Much has changed in Sangin since last year, when Pendleton troops suffered heavy casualties

On assignment

Staff writer Gretel C. Kovach, who covers military affairs, and photographer Nelvin C. Cepeda are embedded this summer with Camp Pendleton-based Marines in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Amid a U.S. drawdown in that country, troops from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force are serving in that stronghold of the Taliban.

During a patrol in Sangin that lasted more than 12 hours in temperatures in excess of 100-degrees, the last Marine in the patrol holds security as Marines stop for a brief break..

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During a patrol in Sangin that lasted more than 12 hours in temperatures in excess of 100-degrees, the last Marine in the patrol holds security as Marines stop for a brief break..

SANGIN, Afghanistan 
In one of the most violent districts in Afghanistan, the line of two dozen Marines walked slowly through the field. Following each other’s footsteps, the infantrymen were careful not to stray from the path marked by an engineer sweeping for bombs.

When the early-morning patrol emerged from shoulder-high corn, a group of Afghans waited near a mud-walled housing compound to speak to them. Intelligence reports had identified this area of Sangin as an active staging and egress area of the insurgency. But the men smiling at the Marines looked relaxed. A teenager offered a bite of his cucumber. An old man displayed a large tumor on his arm and asked for a doctor.

“They seem happy. Ask them if there are any guys they don’t recognize from out of the area,” Staff Sgt. Trent Templet told the interpreter.

In fact, the Afghan men were perturbed. “The paths are safe here. Why are you walking through the crops?” one asked the Marines.

“Tell him sorry, this is our first time here. We didn’t know how bad the IED (improvised explosive device) threat is,” said Templet, 32, of Plaquemine, La., the 3rd platoon sergeant for D Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, an infantry unit out of Twentynine Palms that deployed to Sangin in April.

“If I find an IED here, we’re going to come back and talk,” Templet warned, adding, “Tell him if he wants to show us the path and lead the patrol he could, so we don’t mess up the crops.”

Much has changed in Sangin since the spring of 2011. The Camp Pendleton unit then deployed to the area, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, suffered more casualties during its seven-month tour to Sangin than any unit of the entire war.

About 55 U.S. Marines have been killed in Sangin and more than 500 wounded since the U.S. took over the area from British forces in October 2010. About half the deaths were suffered by the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment.

Sangin remains a dangerous place troubled by at least one small-arms attack or insurgent bomb daily, but it is far calmer today than it has been in several years. By comparison to the heavy casualties suffered by British and U.S. forces who came before, the Twentynine Palms Marines now serving in Sangin have suffered just one killed in action in the district (plus four more operating with them in a neighboring district during a large operation in June).

In fact, the most significant aspect of 3rd platoon’s recent operation was how uneventful it was. After nearly 14 hours on patrol, Templet and his reinforced squad encountered no bombs or known insurgents, and machine-gun fire in the distance turned out to be a celebratory outburst from a wedding.

The platoon commander, 1st Lt. William McCabe, 27, of York, Pa., had set out from Combat Outpost Tabac, also known as Alcatraz, the night before to hunker near the river with another squad of Marines. Many of his encounters during the operation last week involved invitations to tea or children bartering fruit for pens.

“In our area, it’s stable and calm,” he said. “I feel I could walk around without a flak jacket, with just my rifle. I am constantly greeted by the locals and invited to dinner or to drink chai.”

During four months in Sangin, McCabe and his platoon have gone on more than 100 patrols but were shot at just once and encountered eight insurgent bombs, including several turned in by locals. As recently as last year, virtually every Marine patrol encountered multiple roadside bombs or a firefight.

Money is flowing into Sangin now, from the Afghan government through district channels and from foreign donors. That has provided an incentive to keep the peace, McCabe said: “There are a lot of people who had nothing before, and now they have jobs. Now they have the guts to stand and fight.”

Other factors in the increased calm in Sangin include an energetic new district chief of police savvy enough to play the local tribes off one another, a particularly bad poppy harvest this year depriving the insurgency of funding, extensive surveillance capabilities by numerous blimps over the area and operations by about 1,400 Afghan security forces in the district.

During a recent visit to Sabit Qadam, the forward operating base also known as Jackson, the sergeant major of the Marine Corps, Michael Barrett, told Marines assembled in the bunker chow hall about the first of his many trips with the commandant to Sangin.

“I’ve spent a lot of time over here in the Sangin region, and I’ve seen this place develop,” he said. The white Taliban flags that used to fly within eyesight of the FOB Jackson rooftop were pushed farther and farther away as the bubble of security around central Sangin expanded, “then I watched it to where you could walk through the market without any incidents.”

U.S. Marines will continue to operate in Sangin until most American troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, said Lt. Col. David Bradney, 45, of San Antonio, commanding officer of 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.

“The insurgency values Sangin. It values Sangin because of its poppy and because of its people. The people do not really see themselves as tied to GIROA (the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) like a lot of other places,” Bradney said.

Sangin traditionally was the West Virginia of Afghanistan, as one Marine described it — a backwoods with scant ties to the central government. That is changing thanks to a strong district governor, increased security wrought by a succession of Marine battalions and about $30 million in development projects in store for Sangin over the next year and a half, Bradney said.

The district governor, Mohammad Sharif, has worked with the tribes and “is slowly bringing them around to understand that GIROA is the way that they are going to have to kind of face the future,” Bradney said.

For the Twentynine Palms Marines patrolling Sangin, the changes have meant that two of the most common threats this summer have been heatstroke and failure to earn a combat action ribbon.

Templet, who is serving his fourth combat tour and will soon retire, explained that for Marines, a peaceful war zone is like making it to the Super Bowl only to sit on the bench: “If you never get into a no-(crap) firefight, you never know what you’re made of. Then you have old-timers like me who are tired of getting shot at.”

For instance, one of his squad leaders, Sgt. Anthony Garbo, 27, of Virginia Beach, groused during the patrol: “They know we’re coming. If they’re big Taliban sympathizers, they can just run.”

Garbo would have enjoyed a firefight as much as any Marine. Instead he had to endure his platoon sergeant’s sniping over his amiable way with the locals. “Sgt. Garbo, he’s all smiles. Everyone just wants to hug him!” Templet teased.

Templet couldn’t be happier that no one attacked his Marines — “As long as they go home with all their limbs, I’m happy.”

His biggest concern at the end of the patrol — dubbed the Sangin Death March by the two journalists accompanying them — was the glassy stares and beet-red faces of his men. Their water was running low, despite trekking in with brimming rucksacks and hydration packs, and a wave of humidity rising in triple-digit heat off the mud was a slap in the jaw.

When the convoy sent down the main road to retrieve them overshot the position, Templet fumed over the radio: “Turn around! My guys are droppin’ out!”

Informed later of the impending story this reporter planned to write about the most boring 14-hour patrol she had ever experienced, Commandant Gen. James Amos chuckled. A boring day in Sangin — “that’s winning the war, right there,” he said.